Inflation in the UK is running at more than 10 per cent, making food and other goods more expensive. Energy prices have almost tripled.

This is as the UK is facing its longest recession in decades, and Britain’s workers are striking because wages aren’t keeping pace with the cost of living.

Essential workers such as nurses and teachers are bearing the brunt of high living costs as more than a third of their wages could go on rent.

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According to London property agency Foxtons, the number of rental properties to become available in the first nine months of 2022 fell almost 18 per cent year on year, while demand rose more than 16 per cent. Rents rose on average by more than 22 per cent.

The average cost of a tiny studio in the capital was £340 (US$404) a week, up almost 25 per cent from a year earlier. Meanwhile, the average wage is about £40,000 (US$47,500). A room in areas closer to the city centre can fetch around £850 a week.

Bidding wars for flats are common and would-be tenants are agreeing to pay rent many months up front.

“Where we used to have say 14 inquiries for a property, we now have 70 or 80,” Kristjan Byfield, co-founder of property lettings agency Base Property Specialists in London’s Shoreditch district, told South China Morning Post.

He said their vacant property advertisements online sometimes get taken down in “20 minutes because we have already had 50 inquiries”.

Amina*, a single 26-year-old registered nurse who moved to London from the East Midlands town of Nottingham to take a job in the cancer ward at one of London’s large teaching hospitals.

She now spends more than half her take-home salary of £484 a week renting a minuscule one-bedroom flat in Croydon in south London’s outer zone. She considers herself lucky to have found it so cheap.

“I do night shifts so don’t really want to go into a flatshare as I need to sleep when I can,” she said.

Council tax, utility bills and travel that costs £272 a month swallow up most of the rest.

Amina says she has not yet resorted to using food banks as “my parents help me as much as they can by taking me for a big shop at Costco (a discount retailer) once a fortnight”.

Not everyone has a family who can help them out.

A survey commissioned by the homeless charity Shelter and Nationwide Building Society found one-in-12 private renters in England - equivalent to 941,000 people - are at risk of eviction.

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A quarter of private renters, or 2.4 million people, are struggling to pay their rent, 24 per cent more than last year.

A handful of studies and surveys in recent years have helped fuel media reports about an exodus of people from London, citing reasons such as housing costs and Covid-19, which hit some industries hard during lockdown.

Still, affordable rental properties remain in short supply in London.

“The stock of homes for rent in London is 50 per cent below the five year average, 20 per cent lower across the UK, as homes are snapped up faster than new supply comes to the market,” said Richard Donnell, head of research at property website Zoopla.

A Zoopla survey showed rents in Manchester also climbed 15.6 per cent, 12.3 per cent in Birmingham and 14.1 per cent and 12.9 per cent in Glasgow and Bristol respectively.

“The UK rental market doubled in size from 2001 to 2015 but has stopped growing since then as new investment is offset by landlords selling - taking capital gains to pay down debt or fund retirement,” Donnell said.

Byfield said policies to make developers put aside a percentage of “affordable homes” have not worked.

“For far too long in London there has been far too much luxury property built - developers have been able to push back too much and too often on affordable and social housing requirements,” he said.

“London in particular has for the last 20 to 30 years relied heavily on foreign investors, some who buy with the intention to rent out, but a lot buy to sit on assets. It’s land banking.”

Byfield believes the politicisation of the sector has also not helped, with tax hikes for landlords simply making things worse.

As a result, 29 properties a day come out of the private rental sector and go into lucrative short-term holiday lets such as Airbnb, he said.

“That’s what’s terrifying. I don’t see how an increase in homelessness can be avoided at the moment - there is simply not enough social housing,” he said.

Byfield believes the real cause of the current crisis lies in a lack of government long-term housing strategy. He pointed out there had been more than 20 housing ministers in the past two decades. Successive house building targets have not been met.

Campaign groups such as the London Renters Union and Generation Rent are pushing for a freeze in rents in England and Wales. Scotland has frozen most rents until the end of March 2023.

“Private renters in England are contending with soaring energy and food prices, and they’re also vulnerable to a rent increase, which could tip them into poverty,” Generation Rent deputy director Dan Wilson Craw said.

“The government could step in and freeze rents during this period of high inflation, and keep thousands of people secure in their homes, and stop them from going hungry.”

* Name changed at the request of the interviewee.